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558

CHARLES STEWART PARNELL

practical help to our people; while there is scarcely any hand save Amer ica's between the starvation of large masses of the western peasantry: England alone of almost all the civilized nations does scarcely anything, although close behind Ireland, to help the terrible suffering and famine. which now oppress that country. I speak a fact when I say that if it had not been for the help which has gone from America during the last two months among these, our people would have perished ere now of starvation. . .

We are asked: "Why do you not recommend emigration to America?" and we are told that the lands of Ireland are too crowded. They are less thickly populated than those of any civilized country in the world; they are far less thickly populated-the rich lands of Irelandthan any of your western States. It is only on the barren hillsides of Connemara and along the west Atlantic coast that we have too thick a population, and it is only on the unfertile lands that our people are allowed to live. They are not allowed to occupy and till the rich lands; these rich lands are retained as preserves for landlords, and as vast grazing tracts for cattle. And although emigration might be a temporary alleviation of the trouble in Ireland, it would be a cowardly step on our part; it would be running away from our difficulties in Ireland, and it would be acknowledgment of the complete conquest of Ireland by England, an acknowledgment which, please God, Ireland shall never make.

No! we will stand by our country, and whether we are exterminated by famine to-day, or decimated by English bayonets to-morrow, the people of Ireland are determined to uphold the God-given right of Ireland to take her place among the nations of the world. Our tenantry are engaged in a struggle of life and death with the Irish landlords. It is no use to attempt to conceal the issues which have been made there. The landlords say that there is not room for both tenants and landlords, and that the people must go, and the people have said that the landlords must go. But it may-it may, and it undoubtedly will-happen in this struggle that some of our gallant tenantry will be driven from their homes and evicted. In that case we will use some of the money you are entrusting us with in this country for the purpose of finding happier homes in this far western land for those of our expatriated people, and it will place us in a position of great power, and give our people renewed confidence in their struggle, if they are assured that any of them who are evicted in their attempts to stand by their rights will get one hundred and fifty good acres of land in Minnesota, Illinois, or some of your fine Western States.

Now the cable announces to us to-day that the Government is about to attempt to renew the famous Irish Coercion Acts which expired this

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year. Let me explain to you what these Coercion Acts are. Under them the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland is entitled to proclaim at any time, in any Irish county, forbidding any inhabitant of that county to go outside of his door after dark, and subjecting him to a long term of imprisonment with hard labor, if he is found outside his door after dark. No man is permitted to carry a gun, or to handle arms in his house; and the farmers of Ireland are not even permitted to shoot at the birds when they eat the seed corn on their freshly-sowed land. Under these acts it is also possible for the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to have any man arrested and consigned to prison without charge, and without bringing him to trial; to keep him in prison as long as he pleases; and circumstances have been known where the Government has arrested prisoners under these Coercion Acts, and has kept them in solitary confinement for two years, and not allowed them to see a single relative or to communicate with a friend during all that period, and has finally forgotten the existence of the helpless prisoners. And this is the infamous code which England is now seeking to re-enact.

I tell you, when I read this dispatch, strongly impressed as I am with the magnitude and vast importance of the work in which we are engaged in this country, that I felt strongly tempted to hurry back to Westminster in order to show this English Government whether it shall dare, in this year 1880, to renew this odious code with as much facility as it has done in former years. We shall then be able to put to a test the newly-forged gagging rules that they have invented for the purpose of depriving the Irish members of freedom of speech. And I wish to express my belief, my firm conviction, that if the Irish members do their duty, it will be impossible that this infamous statute can be re-enacted; and if it again finds its place upon the statute-book, I say that the day upon which the royal assent is given to that Coercion Act will sound the knell of the political future of the Irish people.

JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN (1836

THE BRITISH ADVOCATE OF THE "STRENUOUS LIFE”

T

HE name which has been most prominent in the political his

tory of Great Britain of recent years is that of Joseph Chamberlain, whose work in bringing on the Boer war won him praise at home, but reprobation-deep and almost universal-abroad. Yet in the face of praise and blame alike Chamberlain went on, working for what seemed to him the proper course to pursue in the interests of Great Britain with a strenuous energy and single-mindedness which assimilates him with Roosevelt in America. While active in Birmingham politics, Chamberlain did not enter Parliament till 1876, at forty years of age. There he soon made his mark as a Liberal orator and worker, and gained wide influence outside the House, being regarded as the leader of the extreme Radical party. At first a follower of Gladstone, he became strongly hostile to his Home Rule Bill in 1886. In 1891 he made himself the leader of the Liberal Unionists in the House of Commons, and in the Salisbury Cabinet of 1895 was chosen as Secretary for the Colonies. It was this position that gave him the controlling hand in the Jameson raid and the Boer war, and brought him into such unsavory prominence. In the Balfour Cabinet of 1902, Chamberlain was looked upon as the "power behind the throne," the premier in all but the name. As a public speaker he is vigorous and plausible in manner, with much natural eloquence.

THE ANOMALIES OF THE SUFFRAGE

[Reform of the suffrage was one of the great battle cries of the people of Great Britain during the nineteenth century. In the 1830-32 campaign, and again, a third of a century later, it almost led to revolution. Yet with all the "reform" accomplished, it remained in a very unreformed state in 1883, when Chamberlain delivered the address from which we quote.]

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In 1858 Mr. Bright told us that one-sixth of the electors returned half the House of Commons. At this moment, in 1883, one-fifth of the electors do the same. A population of 6,000,000 in the United Kingdom in 85 counties returns 136 members, and a similar population of exactly the same number in 217 boroughs returns 290 members, and a third population, also of 6,000,000, but residing in 16 great constituencies, only returns 36 members. The last of these 6,000,000 has only one-eighth of the political power which is conferred upon the 6,000,000 in the other boroughs; it has only about one-fourth of the political power which is conferred upon the 6,000,000 in the counties.

And why is this last population singled out and its representation minimized in this way? You know that it is the most active, the most intelligent part of the whole population of the Kingdom. The people who live in these great centres of the population enjoy an active political life which is not known elsewhere. They manage their own affairs with singular aptitude, discretion and fairness. Why should not they be allowed to have their proportionate share in managing the affairs of the nation? Well, do you not think that the time has come when we should strive to substitute a real and honest representation of the people for this fraudulent thing which is called representation now? I will give you only one more illustration, and I will sit down; I will not go out of our own county. Warwick is an interesting place. It is generally in rather a dead-alive condition; but, twice a year, when Birmingham and its vast population is at great expense and inconvenience to carry on its legal business, it awakens into a delusive animation. Warwick has a population of under 12,000 souls, less than the population of any one of the wards of this great borough. Warwick returns two members to Parliament, and if strict proportion were observed there are enough people in this hall to return six members to Parliament. As for Birmingham, our population is 400,000, and the annual increment of that population is so great that every two years we add another Warwick to our number. We return three members, and, lest you should be surfeited with this generous distribution of political power, you are only permitted to give two votes apiece, and so it happens that an elector of Warwick has thirty-four times the political power of every elector of Birmingham.

I have a great respect for the electors of Warwick; they seem to me to be modest and humble-minded men. They appear to feel they cannot lay claim to being six times as good, as virtuous, as intelligent as the electors of Birmingham, and consequently they return one Liberal and one Conservative, and so they deprive themselves of political power. Well, that is very public-spirited, and very self-denying; but why should they be

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forced to this alternative, which is very creditable to their good feeling, but very prejudicial to their political interests?

I need not dwell further upon these anomalies. If they were only anomalies I should not much care, but they are real obstacles to the legis lation that is required in the interests of the people. Now, just let me sum up the situation. What does our Constitution do for us? First, it excludes from all political rights more than half the adult male population; and remember, the class which is excluded is the most numerous class; but it is all one class, and every other class is represented in its last man. Well, then, in the next place, of the remainder four-fifths are outvoted by one-fifth, and so it happens that one-twelfth of what ought to be the whole constituency of the Kingdom returns a majority of the House of Commons. If the one-twelfth really represented the free voice of the people, it would not be of so much consequence; but you know, in many cases at all events, it only represents the influences of some great territorial family, or some local magnate.

Among the numerous discoveries which we owe to science, I was much interested some time ago in reading of one which I think was called the megaphone. Its province was to expand and develop the sounds which were intrusted to it. By its means a whisper becomes a roar. Well, at every general election you hear the roar of the parliamentary representative system, and some people are deceived; they think it the thunderous voice of the people to which they are listening. But if they would only trace it to its source they would find it was the whisper of some few privileged individuals swollen and expanded by the ingenious political megaphones which I have described to you.

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